VOWELS IN STANDARD AUSTRIAN GERMAN - Acoustics ...

Sylvia Moosmüller
Speaker-specific maintenance of the opposition in the stressed position already occurs
in spontaneous speech (see Figure 4.26). In unstressed positions, three speakers
neutralize the opposition in spontaneous speech, and one speaker in the sentence
reading task. Figure 4.26 also reveals that F1 plays an important role in discriminating
the two vowels, where the difference with respect to F1 is the last to be discarded. In
spontaneous speech, the discriminatory ability of F2 is less pronounced. F3, however,
plays an additional role in discriminating the two vowels. Two speakers maintain a
difference in unstressed positions in spontaneous speech, and two in stressed positions
in spontaneous speech. F3 values are lower for the [–constricted] vowel throughout,
pointing to a higher constriction degree for the vowel /O/. It has to be noted, however,
that the most stable discriminatory parameter is F1, pointing to a higher degree of lip
opening for /O/, whereas constriction degree starts to get neutralized in spontaneous
speech, thus corroborating the results of Wood (1975b).
4.4.5. The lower pharyngeal vowels
The lower pharyngeal vowels are traditionally described as front /a/ or back /A/. The
description of front or back refers to the possible tongue body displacements observable
for this vowel pair:
a) The tongue body can be displaced backwards or
b) the tongue body can be displaced forward.
In the back configuration, the pharyngeal passage is narrowed relative to the front
configuration, and the constriction location is considerably above the glottis. For the
front configuration, the constriction location is much lower. Assuming a vocal tract
length of about 16 cm, the constriction location for a fronted articulation would be about
4 cm above the glottis, whereas the back articulation would approximately bisect the
vocal tract. The fronted articulation yields a maximally high F2, bringing F2 and F3
together. The backed articulation results in a maximally low F2, bringing F1 and F2
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